The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on 25 May 2018, replacing the now-outdated Data Protection Act of 1998 (DPA). The GDPR is a unified piece of legislation, governing the activities of any organisation that handles or processes the personal data of individuals living in the EU.

Any business that speaks to its customers is vulnerable to fraud. Whether it’s a conversation about telephone banking or a retail query, almost every conversation is full of security gaps and weaknesses – and hackers are always ready to jump on an opportunity to defraud a consumer and defame a business.

Now that 2018 has begun in earnest, it’s crucial to start the year as you mean to go on. If your business operates a contact centre as part of its operations, you’ll no doubt want to establish some best practices at the outset so that you’re continually delighting your customers throughout the year.

Research from Timico found that, as late as December 2017, 39% of financial firms in the UK were unaware whether their organisation was compliant with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II).

The traditional notion of a bank almost always conjures up images of high-level security. Think vaults, guards, safes and codes. After all, these are the institutions people trust when it comes to safeguarding their hard-earned cash.

For many businesses in the technology industry, 2018 is the year of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Indeed, many organisations will already be in overdrive to get their business ready for the 25 May deadline.

To comply with MiFID II, financial institutions should record and monitor all order-related communications across all channels. To ensure compliance an institution should understand which information must be present and monitored together with the scope relevant for each channel.

MiFID II compliance requires that all financial institutions record and archive, for at least five years, all transactions related to the reception, transmission and execution of client orders or when dealing on their own accounts.

With the regulatory reforms, known as MiFID II, coming into force on January 3rd, 2018, all EU financial institutions face the challenge to transform their processes to ensure compliance. MiFID II aims to make European financial markets safer, more efficient and improve transparency.

Many businesses feel the need to strike the right balance between a reasonably high level of security in accessing customer data, and positive customer experience – an easy, hassle-free access to data and services, which at the same time is perceived as sufficiently secure by customers themselves. Using voice biometrics and other speech technologies is often regarded as the most secure and economically attractive probabilistic authentication procedure, which can also be easily combined with deterministic authentication methods. Crucially, voice biometrics is also the only biometric authentication method that can be used remotely.

One of the best scenarios in offering natural language and voice-enabled services is having freedom to construct, tweak, and optimise bespoke products that perfectly meet the needs of one’s business. Achieving the highest possible level of accuracy in speech recognition and voice biometrics is key to ensuring good performance from the start.

According to McKinsey’s recent survey amongst customer-care executives, 57% of them consider call (duration) reduction their number-one priority for the next five years. No alternatives to a human-to-human conversation are strategically feasible, however, unless they offer better customer experience and a quicker path to fulfilment.

Longer term projections about the pace of artificial intelligence (AI) development into what some scientists refer to as artificial super intelligence (ASI) belong to the realm of futurology at present. Nobody is quite sure what the future holds given the multitude of almost entirely unpredictable factors shaping human history, including the technological part of it...

Businesses should be ready to embrace data and use analytics tools to enhance their interaction with customers. The banking industry is a good example of how businesses use data from multiple sources to engage with customers.

The automated sensitive data redaction software based on speech technologies can help remove confidential information from customer conversation recordings. It has been there for at least a decade, but questions remain as far as its reliability. The key issue is if such solutions can be trusted to ensure full compliance with changing regulations, e.g. the new PCI DSS 3.2, forbidding the storage of Sensitive Authentication Data (SAD) post authorization.

Over 2600 financial services companies in the UK have cost implications connected with the need to observe PCI DSS, the forthcoming Markets in Financial Instruments Directive second version (MiFID II), and other regulatory provisions. Scanning the horizon for new solutions and disruptive technologies that can make a meaningful contribution to optimizing the compliance costs is, therefore, part of the job description for a fairly large cohort of executives in the financial sector.

It is an established fact that there are things artificial intelligence-based applications can do better than humans. Gathering and doing statistical analysis of structured data, and even browsing through the unstructured data, is one area where cognitive systems are hard to compete with. Interpreting analytics is another emerging field, where machine analysis advantages include greater validity and objectivity of results, as well as sheer speed and unrivalled ability to process massive amounts of information.

Our vision is to respond effectively to a new reality of communications by providing our clients with customized speech analytics, voice biometrics, and semantic interpretation solutions. Our key differentiators are easy access and fast deployment, as well as the highest level of accuracy. Spitch achieves this by combining unique mathematics, bespoke technology adaptation, and Swiss-made precision work-flow.

“The ring, nicknamed "West Africa One," has a dozen members, and they have varying skill levels. If a bank account has a larger credit line, it goes to one particular fraudster who's particularly adept at manipulating call center operators.

Apparently, banking executives’ DNA, customer relationships legacy, and even banking infrastructure adjusted to the most traditional business models appear to contribute to a sense of complacency as far as finding new customers and keeping the existing ones. Back in 1994, Bill Gates said that although banking is necessary, banks are not. Banks continue to exist, however many of their financial services are undergoing striking transformations...

KPMG envisions an “invisible bank” of 2030: “there is no ‘banking app’ – access to money is interwoven with health, time management, leisure and friendship. Banks will be just as invisible, but just as vital, as the manufacturers of 4G base stations are today”.

People will always needs banking service, but the unsettling realisation that worries many is that it will be an entirely new style of banking. And probably not with high street banks, unfortunately. Standing in the queue at the branch is already history, perhaps, but many other traditional banking rituals are not regarded as fun anymore, and not just by millennials.

More and more, chatbots are being developed to improve the user experience. Chatbots can automate self-services effectively, but let’s be honest: it’s hardly possible for a chatbot to deliver a smooth customer experience without a finely tuned voice user interface

Dialogue between humans and machines is a reality of our life at present. But where is it taking us? Will technological developments make robo-advisors and personal assistants assume quasi-human characteristics eventually – from artificial intelligence at its core, to the pleasant voice modulations of a good actress or actor inviting emotional attitudes.

There is a firm belief shared by most customer experience specialists that if there is one thing that will remain unchanged in the foreseeable future regardless of disruptive IT technologies it is human-to-human dialogue to address and resolve complex issues. Human dialogue lies at the heart of customer relationship building simply because no automated self-services can fully replace interactive communication between humans today.

Uses of speech analytics are maturing and extending far beyond the boundaries of contact centres. According to recent market reviews, the top three business areas of speech analytics are: improving quality of service and operational effectiveness and efficiency, understanding the customer experience/capturing the voice of the customer, and improving sales effectiveness. These areas are indicative of the continued innovation, expansion and adoption of speech analytics.

Historically, recognising the spoken word has been challenging for some businesses and their contact centres. The most advanced vendors can now, however, provide technology that matches business requirements, including accuracy, real-time processing, semantic interpretation, continuous, automatic learning and others.